Roma Gypsies Travellers

Over the past decade, interest in Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) has risen up the political and media agendas, but they remain relatively unknown. This topical book is the first to chart the history and contemporary developments in GRT community activism, and the community and voluntary organisations and coalitions which support it. Underpinned by radical community development and equality theories, it describes the communities' struggle for rights against a backdrop of intense intersectional discrimination across Europe, and critiques the ambivalent role of community development in fostering these campaigns. Much of it co-written by community activists, it is a vehicle for otherwise marginalised voices, and an essential resource and inspiration for practitioners, lecturers, researchers and members of GRT communities.

Vilified and marginalized, the Romani people—widely referred to as Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers—are seen as a people without place, either geographically or socially, no matter where they live or what they do. In this new chronological history of the Romani, Another Darkness, Another Dawn demonstrates how their experiences provide a way to understand mainstream society’s relationship with outsiders and immigrants. Becky Taylor follows the Gypsies, Roma, and Travelers from their roots in the Indian subcontinent to their travels across the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires to Western Europe and the Americas, exploring their persecution and enslavement at the hands of others. Rather than seeing these peoples as separate from society and untouched by history, she sets their experiences in the context of broader historical changes. Their history, she reveals, is ultimately linked to the founding of empires; the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; numerous wars; the expansion of law, order, and nation-states; the Enlightenment; nationalism; modernity; and the Holocaust. Taylor also shows how the lives of the Romani today reflect the increasing regulation of modern society. Ultimately, she demonstrates that history is not always about progress: the place of Gypsies remains as contested and uncertain today as it was upon their first arrival in Western Europe in the fifteenth century. As much a history of Europe as of the Romani, Another Darkness, Another Dawn paints a revealing portrait of a people who still struggle to be understood.

This volume hopes to act as a catalyst for some new and exciting areas of enquiry in the more “liminal” interstices of Irish Studies, Traveller Studies, Romani Studies and Diaspora and Migration Studies. These disciplines are all relatively new areas of enquiry in modern Ireland, a country whose society has witnessed very rapid and wide-ranging cultural and demographic change within the short space of a decade. The issue of multiculturalism is not one which is particularly new to Irish society as a number of contributors to this volume point out. What is new however is an increased acknowledgement of diversity and multiculturalism in Ireland and Europe as a whole. Such an acknowledgement makes increased dialogue between “mainstream” society, older minorities such as the Irish Travellers and the many newer immigrant communities such as the Roma all the more necessary. For such constructive dialogue to take place it is vital that migratory peoples and their particular expressions of postcolonial identity be voiced and valued. These identities are both complex and diverse and frequently straddle a number of countries and national identities. It is hoped that this volume will go some way towards the cultivation of such dialogue.

Now more than ever the issues of accommodation, education, health care, employment, and social exclusion for British Gypsy and Traveller communities need to be addressed. This book looks at Gypsies and Travellers in British society, touching on topics such as media and political representation, power, justice, and the impact of European initiatives for inclusion. In doing so, it offers important new insights for students, academics, policy makers, journalists, service providers, and others working with these groups.

This book provides an understanding of Gypsies and Travellers by introducing the reader to the richness of their culture and lifestyle.

This edited collection draws together contributions from various social scientific fields and explores the mechanisms and strategies that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities employ to preserve identities and cultural practices in different situational and national contexts. The book has a global focus with case studies from different European nations, as well as from Australia, North and South America. While several chapters acknowledge the power of cultural maintenance in the preservation of identity, others take a critical stance towards those aspects of inwardly focused and self-regulated examples of cultural isolation and highlight the implications that cultural marginality can have for members of these groups. The book is therefore essential reading for students in professional fields such as social work, education and community development. It is also relevant to academics with interests in anthropology, ethnography, migration studies, politics, public administration, sociology and social policy. Many of the book’s themes have a cross-disciplinary and transnational relevance and will be of interest to a range of international audiences.

"This report was commissioned and published by the Commissioner for Human Rights"--Title page verso.

Social work with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children and families has received scant attention, for a variety of reasons, including long-term historical and societal factors. Consequently, the needs of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children in the care system have largely been overlooked. In this complex area of social work, how can practitioners work effectively and constructively with these communities? How can we better understand Gypsy, Roma and Traveller cultures and traditions, and develop culturally competent practice to inform work with these groups? How can we improve the outcomes for looked after children from these families, and help foster carers and adopters to provide the best placements for them? Will be of immense help to all those working with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and looked after children, including children's social workers, adoption and fostering practitioners, Children's Guardians and Independent Reviewing Officers.